Annex 1
THE CURRENT SITUATION IN TIBET REGARDING
HUMAN RIGHTS (TIN BRIEFING NOTE)
The escape of a 14-year old boy from Tibet at
the end of 1999 could hardly have been a more potent symbol of
the lack of religious freedoms in Tibet today and of the failure
of the Chinese authorities to comprehend the nature of Tibetan
loyalties. Ugyen Trinley Dorje, recognised by both the Dalai Lama
and Beijing as the 17th Karmapa, leader of the Kagyu school of
Tibetan Buddhism, made an extraordinary clandestine journey from
Tsurphu monastery near Lhasa to Dharamsala, India, home of the
Dalai Lama. Within weeks of his arrival in exile, he made his
political position clear within the context of religious teachings
and a poem that utilised traditional Buddhist devotional terminology
to express his loyalty to the Dalai Lama and his concern for the
plight of his country. Freedom, he said, was necessary to practise
Buddhism's most important teaching of compassion. His words represented
an awareness of the gulf between Tibetan Buddhist identity and
the ideology of the authorities, which had recognised him as the
Karmapa in order to create a facade of legitimacy for their mechanisms
of control and suppression. The 14-year old had chosen to reject
the life of limited authority and privilege offered to him by
the Chinese. The Tibet Autonomous Region authorities attempted
to maintain the illusion they have created, stating that he had
merely left Tibet in order to retrieve sacred objects from Sikkim,
and that he had no intention of "betraying" the state.
"Religious freedom" in Tibet remains
subordinate to the political and economic requirements of the
state, and the speeches of Chinese officials throughout 1999 frequently
used traditional Buddhist language in order to disguise their
political motives while condemning Tibetan religious belief in
practices such as divination or consultation of oracles as "superstitious".
Great care was taken during the visit of the official Panchen
Lama to Lhasa in June to observe as many Tibetan cultural and
religious traditions as possible in order to convey the impression
that Tibetan Buddhism is thriving in Tibet. The day before nine-year
old Gyaltsen Norbu's arrival in Lhasa, a special Tibetan banner
portraying an important lama was hung at the Jokhang temple above
the prostration area. The Chinese press referred to the boy's
ability to "recite sutras for three successive days",
ascribing special qualities to him in order to justify their choice.
Tibetans, who are traditionally loyal to the reincarnation of
the Panchen Lama chosen by the Dalai Lama, were not taken in.
Some expressed their dissent in a few murmured works to foreign
journalists, while at the Jokhang temple, an offering left by
the Chinese choice of reincarnation was quietly displaced. Such
solitary acts are frequently the only form of resistance possible
to Tibetans given the level of official control over their daily
lives.
The hostile response of the Chinese authorities
to peaceful protests in Beijing and elsewhere of Falun Gong practitioners
was reflected by the authorities in Tibet throughout the year
in forceful statements expressing loyalty to the Party line. The
ban on Falun Gong was used in Tibet in an attempt to revitalise
a desultory atheism campaign announced at the beginning of 1999,
which many officials must have suspected would in any case have
little influence on the inner lives and faith of Tibetans. It
is conceivable that a continued attack on Falun Gong practices
could lead to a further crackdown on Buddhist—particularly
Tantric or visionary—practitioners in Tibet.
As 1999 drew to a close it became clear that
the authorities in Tibet were prepared to raise the stakes in
their implementation of religious policy in order to maintain
political control. Key religious figures and scholars who were
working within the community, often with the tacit support and
respect of Tibetan cadres and government officials, were detained
and even tortured. Some of these monks, nuns or laypeople had
enjoyed an uneasy freedom since the Cultural Revolution, when
many of them had been imprisoned or "struggled against".
The official recognition of their influence was crucial in the
detention of two senior religious figures. Gyaye Phuntsog, a senior
educationalist from Qinghai, and Sonam Phuntsog, a popular and
respected religious teacher in Sichuan. The detention of Sonam
Phuntsog, who had reportedly conducted long life prayers for the
Dalai Lama earlier in the year, led to an unprecedented demonstration
of support for him by local people in Kandze county, who gathered
to protest outside the detention centre where he was reportedly
held together with two of his disciples. At least 300 people are
said to have joined the protest before it was broken up by police,
which makes it one of the largest demonstrations in Tibetan areas
since the pro-independence protests in Lhasa in the late 1980s
that led to the imposition of martial law.
There was a tense atmosphere in the city of
Lhasa throughout the year, heightened by intensified security
at the time of several key anniversaries—including the 40th
anniversary on 10 March of the Lhasa Uprising in 1959 and the
50th anniversary on 1 October of the founding of the People's
Republic of China. Troop movements in border areas and in the
capital were intensified and amidst demonstrations of military
strength by the authorities, displays of nationalist pageantry
were devised to intensify the appearance of Tibet's integration
into the motherland. In October, citizens of Lhasa were required
to dress in their smartest clothes and to wave red flags and sing
patriotic songs to commemorate the foundation of the Communist
state.
Despite their best efforts to present an atmosphere
of calm and political stability for VIP guests during the public
celebrations for the National Minorities Games in Lhasa in August,
officials in Lhasa were severely embarrassed by several incidents
of dissent that occurred during this period. A Tibetan building
contractor who succeeded in taking down the Chinese national flag
from a flagpole in the centre of the Potala Square was detained
and beaten as he attempted to replace the red flag with the illegal
Tibetan national flag. Unconfirmed reports from Tibet indicate
that he may have died while in police detention from injuries
sustained as a result of the beating he received. In a further
incident, monks and nuns shouted pro-independence slogans during
one of the public events held to mark the Minorities Games.
Earlier in the year, the authorities also carried
out a number of apparently arbitrary detentions prior to the anniversary
of the 10 March 1959 Uprising, which intensified the climate of
fear and intimidation. Prisoners in Tibet's Number One prison,
Drapchi, were particularly affected by the security crackdown.
Repercussions from two peaceful demonstrations by both political
and criminal prisoners in May 1998 continued to affect the everyday
lives of inmates at Drapchi. They were denied visitors, adequate
food, clothing and other facilities. Following the May protests,
it took more than a year and a half for comprehensive information
about the deaths of prisoners and sentence extensions imposed
on inmates to reach TIN due to the repressive measures taken by
the Tibetan authorities.
The city of Lhasa, formerly one of the great
centres of learning and culture in medieval Asia, faced the new
century as a divided city in the process of transformation according
to a Chinese economic and political blueprint. Rapid urbanisation
in Lhasa has led to a seven-fold increase in the population of
the city over the past 40 years—from 30,000 in 1959 to an
estimated 200,000 today, with more than 50-60 per cent of this
population estimated to be Chinese. Tibetans' concerns about the
changing nature of their city, and the long-term threats to the
Tibetan identity implicit in the development of an underclass
of unemployed, uneducated citizens prey to alcoholism and other
addictions, are expressed through popular culture. In the 1980s
the prime topic of conversation in the Barkhor was the political
demonstrations and the latest pro-independence activity. Jokes
and songs in 1990s Lhasa were more likely to focus on the drive
to accumulate wealth, or on prostitution becoming as much a part
of the social fabric of the city as circumambulations of the Barkor.
International financial organisations and governments
were forced to focus upon China's strategies for developing Tibet
following the controversy that resulted from a proposed World
Bank poverty alleviation project in Qinghai. The China Western
Poverty Reduction Project (CWPRP), proposed to resettle nearly
60,000 farmers of mainly Chinese ethnicity into a Tibetan area
of Qinghai. The Chinese authorities viewed the project as an eminently
suitable model for future development and demographic restructuring
in the province; it would assist the provincial government to
develop an agricultural base and an infrastructure in the area
in order to exploit the rich mineral resources of Qinghai, which
include petroleum, natural gas, asbestos, salt, potash, lead and
zinc. The scope and structure of this development are underpinned
by Party legislation, which dictates that all natural and mineral
resources in Tibet are the property of the Chinese state. At the
time of writing the China Western Poverty Reduction Project was
on hold while the World Bank's Inspection Panel decided whether
the Bank had violated its own operational guidelines, which require
thorough assessment of project impact, full consultation with
affected people and timely public disclosure of these findings.
Beijing has asserted that security policy is
an integral part of the Party's overall strategy to develop the
"western region", which incorporates all of the Tibetan
areas of the PRC. The authorities stated earlier this year that
"social and political stability" is essential for the
implementation of the Party Central Committee's strategy for development
of the region. This notion of "stability" is devised
and reinforced by a complex system of rulings made behind closed
doors in Beijing and the actions of zealous cadres in rural townships
and grass roots organisations throughout Tibet.
1999 saw a further strengthening of the mechanisms
of control in Tibet with an aggressive anti-Dalai Lama campaign
at the heart of policy initiatives. This has only served to underline
the conflict in Tibet between private loyalties and political
pressure to conform to the Party line. The escape of the 17th
Karmapa and other key events of 1999, such as the protests in
Kandze, indicate that political campaigns aimed at negating Tibetan's
faith and cultural identity in order to bring about stability
have frequently had the opposite result.
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